The humanitarian crisis in Yemen has been repeatedly featured in the media headlines for quite some time and still little has been done to alleviate the suffering.
According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Acute Malnutrition report (pdf), 2,254,663 Yemeni children under five years old are so malnourished that they require medical treatment.
Of these, 395,195 suffer from severe acute malnutrition, which is potentially fatal, an increase of 22 percent over 2020.
Additionally, 1,155,653 pregnant and breastfeeding women are "acutely malnourished."
"These numbers are yet another cry for help from Yemen, where each malnourished child also means a family struggling to survive," said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, which prepared the report with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNICEF, and the World Health Organization. "The crisis in Yemen is a toxic mix of conflict, economic collapse, and a severe shortage of funding."
Henrietta Fore, executive director of UNICEF, said that "the increasing number of children going hungry in Yemen should shock us all into action. More children will die with every day that passes without action."
Qu Dongyu, who heads the FAO, added that "families in Yemen have been in the grip of conflict for too long, and more recent threats such as Covid-19 have only been adding to their relentless plight."
No comments:
Post a Comment